Red permanent marker
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: What is it called when a person's dreams become reality?


**Fandom: Hikaru no Go**  
**Title: Red permanent marker**  
**Pairing: Akira + Hikaru**  
**Rating: PG**  
**Description: What is it called when a person's dreams become reality?**

**Disclaimer: Hikaru no Go doesn't belong to me.**

**Red permanent marker  
By miyamoto yui**

The lights of the nightclub were dimly lit and the only full amount of light in one particular part of the whole room was on the front stage. Everything was blue-ish, but not black. It almost looked like it was sparkling like the stars against the night sky of a background. These colors almost blended together.

I almost blended into the background with that dark blue Chinese dress that I wore. It was quite strange. I looked at the brilliance of the specks of glitter all over the outfit and admired it with all of its silver lining. Maybe I should have been disturbed, but it seemed like it was the usual thing for me to do. It was actually comfortable. But had this been in any other setting, I wouldn't have been able to live it down. I wouldn't be able to swallow my pride along with it.

My hair gracefully fell forward as I leaned towards the mic. I touched it gently as the band began to play like jazz in America around the 1920's. I was in a club and I was the main attraction.

Yet, all this was just surface textures. One after another, they were like drapes of colored cloth falling before my eyes. I touched them, but was unsatisfied with my life. What kind of life could I lead going night after night as this performer when, all alone in my apartment, I would envy the people below my windowsill?

Then, as I closed my eyes, the lights became even more dim and I pretended to see silhouettes of people, like the ghost that I would become over time. No one ever remembered what you did once you were done. Whomever did, they lived in the past, with you locked into their memories. "Living", was it?

The saxophone played its first note and I grabbed onto the mic with my fingertips touching the top as if I would protect it, my voice going only into this machine.

Then, I heard my own voice in this momentary silence.

"When and where, in this distant place and time,  
Did I lose the very thing I treasured?  
Why do I feel like nothing is ever real anymore  
While I am awake, when these dreams,  
Are truer to me than life itself?"

The rest of the band played and I swayed from side to side gently with my eyes slightly opening. I squinted my eyes to look into the crowd of passerbys. After all, that's what they did, right? I stood here, but they would leave after the performance was over.

That's what I'm paid for.  
I sell them the dream of beauty, the masquerade of passion.

"Where did you go? Where am I?  
Where was I? Where are you?  
Am I the only one who feels this obstinate  
Towards the change between us?"

It was then that I took a step to my right, crossing my left over my right foot. Tap, tap went my slip-on shoes as I walked across the stage with a bittersweet expression. A smile for politeness was what they wanted, that's what they paid for. And I will give it to them.  
I'm paying my way through life through their labor.

"The wind sounds like a flute  
I try to say your name, but the ring is different.  
People are mysterious beings,  
They can be anything, be everything,  
And be nothing  
All at the same time."

It was then that I caught a glimpse of a small light to one side of the room, to the right hand corner.  
The candle lit was flickering, swaying as gracefully as I was on stage. My fingers enwrapped the mic, unable to slip through the grip like sand held by a determined child.  
My lip slightly moved into a small smile. A face began to emerge and be reflected. It was hazy, but it was there. And all the anxiety I had was washed away temporarily.

Maybe this person would sell me a dream tonight. An angel or devil was fine.

"I want something that will stay and never go,  
Enrapture and capture, wrap you with my legs,  
My fingers touching your face,  
And when I'm about to kiss you,  
I breathe into your ear.

Possessive, that's what they call people like me.  
Obsessive, that's what they say shouldn't be.  
But I caught you, against your will,  
I will keep you  
Until the end of time…

Until the end of time."

Then, the lights became dark and there was no more performance. I changed out of my clothes and left through the alleyway. Wouldn't they all be surprised that the beautiful woman they stared at was actually a man?

But midway, there he stood before me. And it was then that I became aware of the mask I had left on in my hurry. He stood before me with critical eyes.

They were intense, almost as if they flamed me with the weight of their strength.

At this challenge, I turned back and ran away. He chased me with his boots making tap, tap noises on the pavement. When he caught me, he pulled my sleeve to turn me around to face him.  
I shook my head.

"You're wrong," I said with my eyes.

I didn't know why I said that, but its meaning was as elusive and as sticky as a spider's web.

He didn't care though, pushing my bangs, he grabbed my collar and kissed me. And I was enjoying that kiss. My lipstick was bleeding onto his lips.  
And I was melting into him as the rain above us began to sprinkle and become just as loud as my breathing…

**+/+/+**  
In a cold sweat, I woke up to find that it was only 4am in the morning. But I couldn't go to sleep anymore.

I left my house just as usual to go to the competition just as I always had, but I knew that  
something had changed. Something was solidified.

It was dying to overflow, attaching itself to my blood and clotting its flow to my brain and my heart.  
This intensity was killing me. I really was-  
Yes, it was true.

So, when I saw him after two years and four months, I knew that dream wasn't one any longer. I knew I had to make it reality.

When I played against him, I knew it was him.

And he was going to be a part of my dreaming turning into reality, no matter what.

I ran after him when he told he would someday tell me the truth. I wondered what kind of truth would he say to me. Why did I get a feeling that it was more than Sai, him, and myself? Why did I get the feeling it would be the answer I had been torturing myself forever since I met you, Hikaru?  
He went into the elevator and I followed, insulted that he called me 'baka'.

At that moment, from this side of the same dream, I grabbed his collar and kissed him, unable to contain myself any longer. He slapped me out of shock.  
"What the hell are you doing?!" he shouted at me.  
I let out a deep sigh of relief, despite everything, because I had let out all my feelings into that single kiss.  
Clearly, I answered, "I'm going to be chasing you until we die, Shindou."

Even with this, we became closer friends from then on, but I wondered if he understood the depth of my answer with that childish brain of his.

But one day, unexpectedly, while I was walking home alone after going downtown to just have some alone time, Hikaru passed by me saying with an embarrassed face, "You didn't come today."  
"Weren't you mad at me? I practiced somewhere else-"  
In the shadows, when the darkness was about to take over the sky once more, Hikaru kissed me for the first time.  
He told me defiantly, "Who said that you could make a dream alone?"

It was then that my dreams and reality eclipsed.

Wherever it was painted or not,  
I know that I will write it in blood if I have to,  
even if it's not in the books of Destiny,  
It must be you and I. It has to be you and I.

You were the only who didn't see me as a spectacle.  
You saw me as a person, despite all the faces I gave to the world.  
You didn't care for any of that at all.

All that mattered was that we made each other stronger and the people we wanted to become in the future.

Because to me, I always believed that dreams were just waiting to be discovered with time. But as we walked beside one another, I realized that you didn't pick a dream.

It came to you like a burning star. So intense, it could burn you. But so beautiful, you didn't mind all the pain and suffering.  
But it didn't mean that it ended there once you attained it. You had to bleed even more to keep it with you and to keep it shining for everyone to see.  
He looked back at me with that same laugh he gave me when we first met in sixth grade.  
"Stop thinking so much, Touya."  
"I can't help it."

**+/+/+**  
Years later, he took my hands and laid them palm up on his knees. I sat on the black table in the living room as he sat on the couch right in front of me.  
"What are you doing?" I said with a laugh, pushing my hair over my ear.  
"I told you not to worry, didn't I?"  
I sighed as I gulped from guilt. I knew I thought too much and it always worried him because it showed on my face.

Leaning his head forward, he pulled up my hands to look at them. "See? Didn't I tell you to trust me?"  
I leaned inward and looked at my hands. "What are you talking ab-Mmm."  
Hikaru smiled as he kissed me, a dream with each touch of these lips.

"You're a baka, even until now. Whether or not I'm written here…" he then took out a red permanent marker and made his own line through my hands. "I've been there all along."  
I smiled softly as tears came to my face. He could still touch me even with his childish stupidity and reasoning.

And our dreams continued to sparkle against the blueness of the beautiful, cruel world.

In Go, you tried to make as much territory as you could, even with all the handicaps. But the main thing was attacking, not defending. So, when I looked up into your eyes in sixth grade, in that school competition, after two years, when got together,

Even now, I see it clearly in front of me.

Until I met you,  
I didn't know that dreams couldn't be made alone.

**Owari. / The End.**

**Author****'****s note:** I wanted to make a short fanfic for today. I was thinking of Gunslinger Girl, but I will finish that one later. For now, I will stick with Akira because that's what came to my head. (And once I have time, I can FINALLY finish inside and out and forever yours.)  
He's so passionate it makes me lose my breath. Yes, I know it's strange, but I'm trying to find new ways and more and more paths to make my writing deeper as well as improving it.

Yes, after all the depressing stuff, I needed WAFFY!  
^^v  
\- yui

**April 20, 2004**


End file.
